The best artists…. are those who inhabit the warm world, who hear the blood of the moon humming in the seas and who know the dark sounds of the human body, hearing their own blood in their own ears.
Jay Griffiths, from ‘A Love Letter from a Stray Moon’
In my own life, I work to exemplify what Jay Griffiths writes of artists. It means to daily walk away from the comfort zone of house and studio and stalk the land with no other purpose than to connect with whatever, whomever is attached, floats within or resides here at Windgrove.
By listening with an unfocused, yet intense awareness, something drops on me, around me, into me and the truths of a “sense of place” — even though ultimately remaining mysterious and hidden — become attached.
The land’s stories ultimately enliven the need to live a life of necessity that is born out of a desire take part in the creation of a habitable earth governed by a sacredness that honors all beings bereft of dogma.
“He saw nothing. The country was thick with sacred stories more ancient than the ones he carried in his sweat-slippery Bible. He did not even imagine their presence…. These stories were like fleas, thrip, so tiny that they might inhabit a place…he would later walk across without even seeing.”
Peter Carey from ‘Oscar & Lucinda’
On a small point of land fifty feet above the shoreline not far from my house is an ancient aboriginal midden made up of thousands of discarded shells and opercula; cast there from 12,000 years ago up until the early 1800‘s when God fearing Christians inflicted their own brand of genocide upon the aboriginal’s extremely stable culture.
Click here for larger image of midden
I pick up a single dirt stained operculum and know that I’m holding a single story of life, of birth, of joy, of full bellies around a fire of dance and song.
Somewhere in this midden is the very, very last operculum placed there by the unwary black hand. And it’s single story portends the all too sad and common history of eviction and extermination perpetuated by missionary zeal accompanied by political/business greed and corruption.
After several minutes of sitting with the stories of this midden, I walk away, not so much depressed by what unfolded here, but emboldened to live my life with as much courage and truth as is possible.
I live my life
I live my life in growing orbits,
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.Rilke translated by Robert Bly
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